To all the arguments lodged against gay marriage, add this one--it's a matter of national security. So argued a woman interviewed recently by NPR at the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Colorado Springs. Her reasoning: By breaking down the family, we're not having enough kids, while "other countries" with an agenda to hurt America are having boatloads of babies. If we legalize gay marriage, the terrorists will eventually outnumber us.

One might be tempted to dismiss this as a desperate rant if it weren't so close to arguments the Bush Administration itself has been making. As the election campaign gets under way, national security has become the ultimate all-purpose trump card. The Bush crowd will play it anywhere.

Consider Attorney General John Ashcroft's justification for a ruling last year that all Haitians seeking refuge here should be detained. In Ashcroft's view, national security warranted locking them all up, not because any of them posed a threat to national security but because detaining them all would deter other Haitians from seeking refuge here, and that would save money that could then be deployed elsewhere to protect our national security. On this theory, any initiative that reduces government expenditures--from welfare reform to cutting spending on environmental protection--is warranted by national security, because those funds can then be used to fight terrorism.

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